26. The Foragers ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

That fall, Ida drove Charles and Robert to “the secret farm.” She headed toward Rainsville. North of where the road made a bend, a farm had once stood. Nature had reclaimed the site. The buildings had long ago rotted into oblivion, leaving no trace above ground. Even the wagon tracks that had led from the location of the barn out to the road had vanished, except for two ruts that could barely be seen amid the tangled growth on the north face of a low hill. Somehow, Ida knew how to weave through islands of blackberry vines and not get scratched. The boys followed her exactly, so that they would not get scratched either. All three carried buckets.

In the vicinity of where the buildings had stood far back from the highway, Ida strode up to “her” crab apple tree. The bright red fruit was two inches in diameter. The tree had set on heavily that year. She helped the boys fill their buckets with crab apples, which she would later slice and boil to make a clear orange jelly that was Robert’s favorite of all the jellies his mother ever made.

“Look,” she said, holding a crab apple in one hand and cutting it open with a paring knife that she had brought in the pocket of her dark blue jacket, “what color are the seeds?”

“They’re brown,” Charles said.

“That’s how you know the crab apples are ready to be gathered,” Ida explained. “If the seeds were not yet dark brown, we’d leave them on the tree a little longer. See how white the apple is on the inside? That’s another indication that they’re ready.”

With buckets full of crab apples, the three made their way back to the car. They emptied the buckets into two bushel baskets in the trunk. Then they returned to the tree to get more of the red fruit. Robert noticed that the skins of the apples were a darker red where the sunlight bathed them.

They made two more trips to the car. By then, the baskets were almost full.

Next, Ida guided her sons to a slope to the north of the crab apple tree. There, she located “her” pawpaw tree.

“What’s a pawpaw?” Robert asked.

“I’m going to show you,” Ida replied. She reached up to loosen a brownish green fruit from the branch. She held it in front of Robert and teased it open with her paring knife.

“The inside is like a mushy banana,” she said.

“Can I eat it?” Robert asked.

“I don’t think you’d like it raw,” Ida cautioned. “The pawpaws might need to be a little sweeter for you. I’m going to put them in Jell-O.”

The small tree had only a few pawpaws, but they had reached the ideal ripeness. Ida carefully laid them in the bottoms of the buckets so that they would not bruise.

“How did you know the pawpaws were ready?” Charles asked.

“It’s just the time of year for them,” Ida said. “Now, you can look at them to see if they are just beginning to turn a little brown. That’s when they’re at their best. If they’re too brown, they’re past their peak and could be rotten.”

Soon, the family was headed home. Ida said, “I sure hope nobody else ever finds my farm.”

Ida was a skilled forager. When March winds gradually straightened the curls of her permanent, she could be found bent over in the yard while harvesting spring greens. She collected the mustard called “bittercress.” She made sure she had plenty of dandelions. Into her bowl went chickweed, the tiniest leaves of the early dock, and a few leaves of the broadleaf plantain. Many of these plants entered into her fresh salads while others were cooked and served steaming hot and generously peppered.

In the spring of the year when the crab apples had been so numerous, Ida would take Robert, Charles, and a friend back to the abandoned farm to collect a few sassafras roots to make tea.

The boys would use shovels to dig just below the surface of the rich soil to expose the thin roots of the shrub with its three distinctively different shapes of leaf, one of them like a mitten. Their mother and her friend then would kneel on an old blanket and gently cut sections from a few of the roots. These she would bundle together to bring home.

“There was an article in the paper not long ago that said sassafras has been banned because the chemicals in it can be harmful, but one not-very-strong cup should be good for us anyway. It’s a tonic that purifies the blood, which has been too lethargic during this long winter,” Ida would say.

At home that evening, Ida would steep the sassafras roots for a minute or two—until each of the four teacups contained a bright amber liquid. She would add honey, and the tea would be ready to drink. Robert would enjoy the flavor so much that he would wish he could have more of the tea.

“The roots are good for tea for only a few weeks, aren’t they?” Joe would ask. Ida would nod. “I wonder,” Joe would continue, “if the government studies were conducted with roots that were past the time when they could be boiled for tea. Maybe the properties change in the other months of the year.”

On another occasion that spring, Ida would take the boys and her friend mushroom hunting at the old farm. She would collect only the morels, which she would dredge in flour and fry in butter.

Back in that same autumn when the crab apples were so numerous, Mrs. Bowen, one of Ida’s best friends, was visiting with Ida over a late afternoon cup of coffee in Ida’s kitchen, and the topic turned to mushroom hunting. Mrs. Bowen’s name was Irene, but Ida always called her “Mrs. Bowen.”

Mrs. Bowen said, “I’ve been giving some thought to that old neglected farm out there by Rainsville. I’d bet you there might be mushrooms back in there.”

Ida gulped. She opened her mouth to say, “No, there aren’t any. I’ve been back there, and you’d be wasting your time.” She hesitated, instead.

Mrs. Bowen’s sharp features sharpened further. She peered into Ida’s soul. “I do believe you were about to say something,” Mrs. Bowen said, meaningfully.

“Oh,” Ida sighed. “I want to let you in on a little secret. Yes, that old place is where I find my morels. It’s also where I get my blackberries, my crab apples, and my pawpaws.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Mrs. Bowen said, setting down her coffee cup with a loud bump on the table, as if she were a queen affixing her seal to a court document. “Just make sure you come get me every time you go out there!”  

“I will,” Ida said. … and, as already implied, Ida would be true to her word, taking her friend with her to “their farm.”

  

24. The Spelling Bee and Halloween ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

Robert was wary about starting the second grade. He was accustomed to Mrs. Hail. When he entered the school on the first day that fall semester and saw Mrs. Hail welcoming a new class into her room, he felt somewhat abandoned, although he knew that passing from one grade to the next was the way the system worked. Now he would have Mrs. Arvin, who was older than Mrs. Hail and who sometimes wore a face of what he took for severity.

After a time, Robert adjusted to Mrs. Arvin’s classroom manner and began to appreciate her methods. For Mrs. Arvin, the answers had to be strictly correct. Give her the correct answers, and she was your greatest supporter!

The year unfolded gradually, as did all the years back then. Time seemed to be in no hurry. Each minute was round and full of promise. One of Mrs. Arvin’s pedagogical strategies was to conduct spelling bees during the second half of the lunch period when the weather was so inclement that the students could not go outside for recess. Robert came to look forward to the spelling bees so much that he hoped for rain. On the drizzly days of autumn, he raced back to school after eating lunch at his home across the street so that he could take part in the contests.

The students chose up sides, and Robert felt proud to be one of the first chosen because he was considered a good speller. He tried as hard as he could not to let down his team. He correctly spelled such words as “separate”: S E P A R A T E. One day, Mrs. Arvin gave him “receive,” and he correctly spelled R E C E I V E. Another day, Mrs. Arvin said, “Robert, spell ‘definite.’” He said, “D E F I N I T E.”

On one rainy noon, Robert wolfed down the lunch of chili and grilled cheese sandwich that his mother had prepared and ran back across State Route 26 to the school building. His class had already chosen sides and had already begun the spelling bee. The moment Robert walked through the door, Mrs. Arvin said, “Robert, while you were gone, Susan chose you to be on her team, and it is your turn. Spell ‘twenty-three.’” Robert felt relieved to be given such an easy example. He took his place with Susan’s group, which was standing in front of the chalkboard, and he said, “T W E N T Y - T R E E.” Mrs. Arvin said, “That is incorrect. Robert, you may sit down.” With the blood rushing to his face, Robert stumbled toward his desk and took his seat. Susan was staring at him accusingly. Mrs. Arvin gave the opposing team “twenty-three,” and Alan spelled it correctly. Robert was too embarrassed to ask why his spelling was wrong, but the questioning look on his face must have revealed his bewilderment. Robert felt certain he had given the correct spelling. Mrs. Arvin said, “Robert, you omitted the h in ‘three.’” Although he knew how to spell “three”—and although he thought he had spelled it correctly—he could remember the sound of his own voice skipping from the t to the r without saying the h.

Robert had failed his team, and his chagrin was palpable. He felt his face grow redder and redder. Perspiration dripped down his neck. He had felt so confident, only to have erred and to have disappointed his team. He realized that, in the future, he could not allow himself to experience the luxury of confidence unless he had first taken every precaution to ensure correctness. One of those precautions was to take his time. He had rushed into the classroom, had immediately been given a word to spell, and had hurried to spell it. In the future, he would take a deep breath, concentrate with a steely steadiness, and not speak until he was sure that he could speak correctly. The lesson was one of the most important lessons he would ever learn.

As Halloween approached, Mrs. Arvin hung a cardboard skeleton on her classroom door. The bones of the arms and legs could swivel and hold various positions. The skeleton was taller than the children in Mrs. Arvin’s class. Halloween fell on a Tuesday, and, for an undisclosed reason, Mrs. Arvin had to be gone during the final period that day. Glen Bisel’s daughter, who was a high school student, took over the class. Mrs. Arvin had provided her with a stack of paper from the purple ditto machine in the main office. The pages retained the pungent but not unpleasant smell of the ink. They bore the outlines of a jack-o-lantern. The children were asked to color the pumpkin.

Robert and his classmates took out their crayons and set to work. While Robert preferred to create his own pictures, he enjoyed art of any kind, including coloring within the lines already laid down for him. He carefully shaded his pumpkin to make it as three-dimensional as possible. Beyond the windows, the skies were heavy with gray clouds scudding eastward and threatening rain. The students worked diligently at their drawings and gave their substitute teacher no trouble.

At the end of the period, Robert hurried home. He presented his mother with his jack-o-lantern drawing, which she appeared to appreciate. The evening became blustery. Now and then, the wind moaned. The weather was delivering the perfect atmospheric conditions for Halloween.

On the previous Saturday, after Robert and Charles’ piano lessons in Lafayette, Ida had shopped at the L. S. Ayres store, a branch of the big department store in Indianapolis. On display near the front doors were plastic Halloween masks.

“You boys, pick out your masks for trick-or-treating,” Ida had said.

The masks featured a fuzzy surface that felt almost like velvet when touched with the fingertips. Charles had selected a gray donkey mask, and Robert had chosen a brown dog mask.

When it was time to go trick-or-treating, Ida gave each of her sons an old sheet to wrap around the shoulders, concealing their identities. They had brown-paper grocery bags, which they had decorated with crayon pictures of bats, witches, and black cats. Joe drove them downtown and parked the car up the street from Grandma Rhode’s house.

Robert and Charles happily donned their new masks and wrapped the sheets tightly around themselves as the wind tried to whip the cloth away. They scurried to Grandma Rhode’s front door and knocked boisterously. When she saw them, she stood back in mock alarm and exclaimed, “Well, sir! Who might these animals be? I can hardly guess!”

“Did we fool you?” Charles asked laughingly, as both boys removed their masks.

“You most certainly did!” Grandma Rhode said.

“Trick or treat!” Robert joyfully shouted, holding forth his paper bag and waiting for the popcorn ball that he knew would be forthcoming.

Grandma Rhode and Great Aunt Margaret, who lived on opposite corners of an intersection, always got together to prepare popcorn balls for Halloween. They made the best! The balls were huge, the popcorn was tender, and the caramel was rich.

While Grandma Rhode placed a giant popcorn ball in each bag, Joe and she chatted about the weather and how they hoped the rain would hold off.

With Joe not far behind in the shadows, the boys next hammered their fists on Aunt Margaret’s door. A big smile spread across her face.

“What do we have here?” she asked. “I see a dog. He seems friendly enough. And here’s a donkey. He won’t kick, will he, Joe?”

“Trick or treat!” yelled Charles.

“I think you’re Charles, and you’re Robert. I see that you already have your popcorn balls from your grandmother, and I will give each of you another one.”

While the boys waited for Aunt Margaret to bring the sweets, the wind whistled around her house and dashed her bushes from side to side.

Robert made his popcorn balls last. He ate only one of them later that night and saved the other for another day. They were the greatest treats of his childhood days.

Joe took his sons to a few other houses in town—enough for each boy to gather four candy bars. Milky Way and Three Musketeers were Robert’s favorites.

The next day, as Robert went to school, he felt sorry that Halloween was over, but he looked forward to the lunch period. The clouds were spitting rain, and he thought it likely that Mrs. Arvin would hold a spelling bee.     

22. The Masons ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

In April of 1961, Grandpa Rhode died.

Seymour Alfred Rhode had been born in 1884. After growing up on his father’s farm on the road to Independence, Seymour had graduated from Attica High School. Briefly, he had taught school. The remains of the one-room schoolhouse, nicknamed “Rock College,” stood in a gloomy tangle of weeds across the road from College Rock. Joe and Ida had taken Charles and Robert past Rock College on Sunday afternoon drives. The boards of the building were gray with age. For a time, Seymour had sold musical instruments in Lafayette. A few years after his marriage to Kosie Ruby Cobb in 1909, he had served on the Board of Directors of Standard Live Stock Insurance Company of Indianapolis.

Rue J. Alexander, born as James Ruevelle, had had a direct influence on Robert’s life because, before World War II, he had helped nudge Seymour into political posts in Indianapolis. Beginning in the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, Seymour had later become an examiner for the Indiana Department of Insurance. He had been named Chief Examiner after fifteen years in the department. When he had begun accepting what were largely political appointments, he had become much more successful than he had been previously.

The family of Grandpa Rhode’s beloved sister, Bertha, and her husband, John Claypool—who lived in New York—mourned the passing of Seymour and sent condolences to Joe. Over the years, they had made several excursions to visit the Rhode clan in Indiana, and they now planned another to keep the far-flung family as close together as possible.

Grandpa Rhode was to be buried in the Pine Village Cemetery after services at Shipps Funeral Home in Oxford. As Grandpa Rhode had been a Mason, he was to be given Masonic rites.

It was the first time Robert had seen the members of the Masonic Lodge wearing their aprons, and it was the first time that he had heard his father give the funeral oration.

Joe had memorized the entire oration, and he was nearly always the one who spoke it at a funeral for a Mason from Pine Village. In the years preceding Grandpa Rhode’s death, Robert had often heard Fred Holdcraft and Robert’s father conversing quietly in the living room. Fred and his wife, Glynalee, were members of the Euchre Club that Joe and Ida played in and the parents of Joy and Jenny, two of Robert’s friends. Fred was a Masonic Past Master and member of the Scottish Rite Valley of Indianapolis. The purpose of his talking in low tones with Joe was to make arrangements for Joe to present the funeral oration for a fellow Mason. For the next few evenings, Robert’s father was not to be bothered, so that he could practice, ensuring that his memory of the speech was perfect.

At the services for Grandpa Rhode, Joe and his fellow Masons wore over their suits the white aprons trimmed in blue with the all-seeing eye symbol above and the symbol of Freemasonry below. Robert found the aprons strange. They were so out of the ordinary as to make Robert doubly conscious of the solemnity of the occasion.

Robert knew that his father wanted to make no mistake in the oration, and, indeed, Joe made none. His sentences flowed effortlessly with perfect cadences and emphases.     

Seymour’s brother Marshall C., who was born in 1888, was a 32nd Degree Mason in the Scottish Rite. Great Uncle Marshall stood near Joe during the ceremony.

The Masons had memberships in the Order of the Eastern Star, to which women could also belong. Ida was a member. Throughout the year, she attended Eastern Star meetings, which were held in lodge rooms on the second story of the Brick Block, a row of shops on the north side of Lafayette Street that had been built in 1902 and 1903.

At the funeral, Ida wore her five-pointed Eastern Star pin with its red, blue, yellow, white, and green triangles.

A few days after the funeral, Joe took his family in his GMC pickup to Indianapolis to attend to the apartment where Grandpa Rhode had lived for many years. Joe’s first cousin Jay, a son of Charles J. Rhode, Seymour’s older brother that was born in 1882, drove his own pickup so that there would be two trucks to haul furniture and boxes. Jay’s wife, Claire, who was a Cajun from New Orleans that Jay had met while he was in the Navy in World War II, remained at home.

It rained cats and dogs almost all day long!

Ida had given Charles and Robert strict instructions to be useful but not in the way. Robert stood quietly in corners of rooms until he was called upon to carry lightweight boxes to the trucks. When it was time to clear Grandpa Rhode’s desk, Ida asked Joe and Jay if the boys could have any of the small items that decorated the desktop. Jay nodded.

“You boys can pick out something for yourselves,” Joe said.

Robert took an iridescent conch shell, and Charles accepted a small metal horse that he later gave to Robert.

Robert clutched the seashell all the way home in the dark of night as the rain pelted the windshield and the tarp that had been tied down over the furniture and boxes in the bed of the pickup.

The death of Grandpa Rhode plunged Robert into a solemn frame of mind. Robert’s pensive mood lasted for a week. He overheard his mother asking his father what should be done. She said that, perhaps, Robert should not have attended the funeral. She added that, maybe, Robert should not have helped carry boxes from Grandpa Rhode’s apartment. Joe suggested giving Robert time to work out everything in his mind.

Robert held the shell in his hand. He was fascinated with the way the mother of pearl tones reflected the light. It was as if the shell were glowing while light was passing through it—as if he were holding the moving light itself in the palm of his hand. Suddenly, he felt that the shell pointed to something greater: a transcendent force just beyond what can be seen. His grandfather was still alive somewhere, sustained and protected by the same light. Were not angels portrayed as beings of light? Could the shell correspond to everlasting life in other dimensions linked to this world through light and its meaning? All at once, Robert thought he knew what was meant in First Corinthians when the Apostle Paul writes, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

Robert emerged from his contemplative week a more cheerful boy. Ida could not figure out what had brought about the change.

21. The Ice ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

That winter, there had come a spell of light snow that would melt a little before the temperature dipped below zero, producing a sheet of ice over the ground. Joe walked into the kitchen and spoke in a low voice to Ida, who promptly told the boys to put on their parkas, stocking caps, and gloves. She had to take Joe to see Dr. Scheurich.

Robert felt a wave of apprehension as he quickly followed his mother’s instructions. He had thought that only he and his brother ever had to visit the doctor, not one of his parents. When he saw his father sitting in a strange posture on one of the kitchen chairs, his face pale and gray, Robert felt his apprehension deepening into anxiety.

Ida ushered the boys toward the car. Joe came slowly from the house. She held open the passenger door for him. He ever-so-slowly sank into the seat. Ida slammed the door, ran around the car, and, with considerable agitation, put the key in the ignition. When the Chevy started, she did not wait for it to warm up. She backed fast down the driveway and out onto the state highway. In a heartbeat, she was driving to Oxford.

Joe had been checking on the Chester White sows that were soon to have litters. One young sow had been pushing against the wooden panels that held her captive in a small exercise area beyond the door of an individual hog house on skids that Joe had pulled into place with his Minneapolis–Moline Z tractor. Painted red, the house had a V-shaped roof, half of which consisted of hinged doors that could swing over, permitting a view of the interior. Joe bought his hog houses from the grain elevator, where they were built at the lumberyard. On this day, Joe had decided that he needed to sink one more metal post to support the panel that the sow had been abusing. He had brought a tall fence post and a sledge hammer. After looking over the situation, he had decided to put the post on the inside of the small lot, so he had climbed over the panel.

Hammering the fence post into the frozen ground was a time-consuming job. Ping–ping–ping! His hammer had sounded a short bell-like tone each time that he had struck the post. Finally, he had driven the post into the ice deep enough to prevent the sow from working on the panel.

He had brought several strands of baling wire, with which he had secured the panel to the post, being careful to push the ends of the wires to the outside so that the sow would not be scratched. With a snap of his wrist, he had used a heavy pair of pliers to give each twist of wire two additional twists, tightening the wires. Finally, he had taken his sledge hammer and had climbed back outside the panel.

That is when it had happened. His feet had become cold, even though he had been wearing boots, high-top laced shoes, and brown woolen socks. He could barely feel where he put his toes in between the boards of the panel. As the gap between the bottom two boards was narrow, he had not pushed the toe of his boot through far enough. His foot slipped and dropped down on the ice. His balance thrown off, Joe had lost his grip on the panel but not on the hammer. Meanwhile, the foot that had suddenly reached the ice skidded out from under him, pivoting him. He had fallen on his side. As bundled up as he was with long johns, a flannel undershirt, a work shirt, a lined denim coat, and a regular denim coat over the lined one, he might have withstood the fall, but he had landed on the handle of the sledge hammer. He had writhed in pain for a few minutes before he had realized that, pain or no pain, he would have to get back on his feet and go to the house.

For the first few steps, standing had felt somewhat better, but then the pain had intensified. He felt certain that he had broken a bone.

Before he was married, he had been helping the members of the threshing ring to separate his wheat, and he had fallen from the grain wagon. His left upper arm had gone between the wooden hound that supported the wagon tongue behind the doubletree, and he had broken the bone with a spiral break. On this day, he remembered that pain.

While Dr. Scheurich examined Joe, Robert and Charles sat quiet as church mice in the waiting room. Before they had entered the doctor’s office, their mother had told them to behave themselves by sitting still and not causing trouble. She had accompanied their father into the examination room. Robert’s fears were mounting. Tears were gathering in the corners of his eyes. He had never seen his father look so pale, so gray, and so unsmiling. Robert still did not know what had happened, although Charles had whispered to him something about ice.

Eventually, Joe emerged. Ida was at his side. The nurse was close behind. Ida and the nurse walked with him down the front stairs to the car. Robert and Charles followed. On this occasion, Robert had ridden in the back seat of the two-door car so his father could sit in front. Robert had managed not to have motion sickness, but, on the way home, he felt the dizziness starting. Still, he listened carefully to his parents’ conversation. Little by little, he felt his worries subside as he began to understand that his father had fallen on the ice, that he had cracked some ribs, and that there was nothing that could be done except take aspirin and wait for the bruising to heal. Dr. Scheurich had wrapped a stretchy bandage around Joe’s side and over one shoulder to keep Joe steady, as much as anything; otherwise, the bandage had no effect, as the doctor had readily admitted.

“You’ll have to milk the cows and feed and water the sows,” Joe was saying to Ida. The doctor had advised him not to move about much for the first two days and for Ida to handle the chores. “I’m sorry for you to have to do my work,” Joe said.

“It’s only for a few days,” Ida reassured him. “The boys can help me.”

After school, Robert and Charles helped their mother all they could. They threw down hay from the mow. They scooped ground feed into buckets to be carried to the sows, each sow in her own paneled lot. They mixed feed and water for the ducks. They scattered feed for the chickens and the turkeys. Robert thought it was funny to watch Ida at work. She wore four-buckle boots that made her feet seem too big for her body. She did everything differently than the boys’ father did. She positioned the stool differently when she sat beside the cows to milk them. She spoke more jokingly to the cows—as if they were people! “You like that clover, don’t you, Flossy!” Ida would say. At the end of each day, Ida had completed all the same jobs that Joe would have accomplished, even though she had done them in her own way.

Eventually, Joe had begun to move about in a gingerly fashion and had resumed doing the chores himself.

“Don’t let your dad try to use his sore side,” Ida had warned the boys. “Think ahead, and help him lift things that he shouldn’t be lifting!” she ordered. Robert and Charles were good about providing as much assistance as they could to their father.

Then, one cold night, Ida set a bushel basket in front of the Norge heating stove in the kitchen. She arranged an old blanket in the bottom. Joe came through the door to the porch. The gloved hand on his good side was holding something that squirmed. He put it in the basket.

“She may have another one before I get back out there,” Joe said, as he went through the porch and out into the night, a flashlight in the hand on his sore side.

Robert peered into the basket. A pink piglet was standing on the blanket. It looked up at him with its inquisitive eyes beneath white eyelashes. Soon, Joe brought another pink piglet and deposited it in the basket.

The boys’ mother prepared a second basket. Later that night, there were nine piglets all in all.

“I think they could go back to their mother now,” Joe said.

Robert put on his coat, hat, and gloves and walked with his mother as she carried the first basket out to the hog house containing the sow that had just had her litter. It was the sow that had given so much trouble. Robert stood on a straw bale to look down through the doors that Joe opened in the roof of the house. A heat lamp cast a reddish light around the inside, which felt warm on Robert’s face. Ida was handing each piglet to Joe, who was setting them down in the fresh straw inside. When the first basket had been emptied, Ida brought out the second basket of piglets. Before long, the newborns were lined up along the belly of the sow and were having their dinner.

“We’d better close the doors now,” Joe said to Robert, who stepped down from the bale. The piglets were so cute that Robert silently questioned why his parents never kept one for a pet. Then he thought about how big the sow was and how it was not nearly as cute as a piglet, and he answered his own question.